


Taste of This

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:03:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Versions of other lives.  (Four things that never happened to Simon Tam.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taste of This

**Author's Note:**

> A 'dan' is a Chinese opera singer who plays women's roles. All  
> performers in traditional Chinese opera are men.

1.  Interlunation

It isn't a mistake, because he doesn't make them.  It's a deliberate,  
quiet act.  Her heart eases quietly and he pulls the sheet over her  
face and notes the time.  The date.

He puts on his coat and goes home.

Outside, they're hanging lanterns for the New Year Festival.    
Carefully lunar, calculated based on a moon that no one's seen in  
generations.  He buys sesame balls from a woman with a mulitated hand  
and tells her that if she comes to the hospital after New Year he'll  
mend it for her.

At home, there are waves from both his parents, and a half-dozen from  
River.  He'll go home to see her and she won't stop talking until he  
leaves.  She knows his textbooks better than he does, and she'll quiz  
him on them for ten or fifteen minutes before she warps the facts into  
an elaborate game.  Pretty, precocious girl who twists him tighter  
than any lover he's had.

The last wave from River says, "You have three days to make it up to  
her."

He curls up with a text and sliced fruit and watches the moon rise.    
Layers of interconnection and brain chemistry.

The box chimes softly.

"Hello, mei mei."

"Simon."

"River."

"You were stupid to do it now.  You could have waited until next week,  
you'd still have had the experience, and you'd have a whole year to  
appease her.  Now you have three days."

"In three days I'll be home.  You'd better have a good present for  
me."

"Nobody comes into this house bearing ghosts.  It's a new rule."  She  
signs off without saying goodbye.

Simon remembers the cool of the hospital and of the woman's skin.  How  
gently her heart failed.  Nothing fluttered in that last moment; she  
washed out clean as water and was gone.  She had no family and no  
great fortune.  Like the real, precious body into which he sank his  
hands in his last classroom year, she was the perfect education.  All  
the mysteries of the human body in her very real flesh.

The candles in the corner cast light on the delicate holograms of his  
ancestors.

When he wakes just before morning, the candles are out and the  
projectors are smashed.

Simon takes pomegranates to the hospital's shrine.  While he's making  
his rounds, birds eat them.  Black feathers all over the ground.

There are firecrackers in the street, and lights in the sky, and he  
isn't even surprised when the woman sweeps into his flat, settles in  
the corner, and starts cursing him.

  
*

2.  Rim

The casket hisses liquid nitrogen and the smell of pure narcotics.    
Edges of his skin flash-freeze and turn black when he reaches out too  
soon.  Hard not to scream.  He drives the other fist into his mouth to  
stay quiet.  It hurts, but unevenly, and he can almost, almost forget  
in the face of the warming box.

Cold carbon and ice crystals waft through Serenity's hold.  The ship's  
chill crawls under his skin as he strips.  

His things are still in his room.  His cast-off clothes are hidden.

He lays a blanket across the casket's edge and climbs across that  
protected stretch, kicking the blanket down behind him.

Inside, River is just barely conscious, curled fetal and slickly  
naked, watching him through one dilated eye.

"Shhh, mei mei."

Wraps himself around her.  The back of her neck presses his lips.

The lid closes over them both.

*

3.  Holliday

"Are you sober?"

"Not for years."  He can stand, though.  He's performed surgery while  
drunker than this.  Carved abcessed teeth from barely-frozen gums.    
Patched truncated limbs.  Mined bullets from soft abdominal tissue.

"It's time."

"My hands are steady."

He follows Mal to the door, stops for his hat and coat.  Polishes his  
watch once on his vest before he steps outside.

Kaylee darts back into the blacksmith's shop as soon as she sees him.    
Peers out the crack in the door, back-lit by the forge.

Inara turns deliberately away from both of them and walks back inside  
the saloon.

On the other side of Simon, Jayne falls into step.  So excited he'll  
hyperventillate in a moment and be no good to anyone.  Malcolm claims  
Jayne's a good man in a fight.  Simon's never seen it.

The rush of horses surprises him for a moment.  Stock plunging down  
the street, away from the peeled-rail gate.  Simon, Mal, and Jayne  
step through, and the gate swings shut behind them.

Across the street, he sees Book bent painfully over his Bible.  Simon  
thinks he might be giving Last Rites.

Across the Corral, Zoe and Wash stare at them, hard and blank.  Her  
fingers twitch toward her gun.  Wash is sunburned across his nose.

Zoe says, "High noon."

Mal says, "Draw."

*

4.  dan

He spent the first three years of his training guiding his body into  
poses that it should not have achieved while all his bones were  
intact.  He can bend double and leap, use a sword, backflip, simulate  
the great battles of the Classical Age.

None of this is useful.  

More significant are the careful, delicate movements of his hands when  
he sings.  He knows the lyrics to a dozen operas by heart.  He moves  
more gracefully than any woman he's ever met.  He can glide as well as  
the greatest lady who ever moved on bound feet.

He's good with make-up.  The stylized lines of his assumed face help,  
the exaggerated eyes and delicate mouth.

The jewellery he's collected over the course of his career is  
spectacular.  He likes the jade and silver tiered necklace  
particularly.

He warms up for hours.  He stretches.  If he reaches back through the  
torn, opium-warped portions of his memory, he can remember doing this  
with River when they were both tiny children.  She taught him most of  
what he knows about being a woman.  The gestures.  The directions in  
which only women can bend.

She pounded on the gates of the opera-school for days after he went in  
and didn't come out.

In the car, on the way to the theatre, Simon thinks he sees her.  Wild  
brown hair and a dancer's posture, perched on the railing of the  
Bridge of Sorrows.  She throws eggs at his car and never focusses on  
Simon's made-up face in the window.

He's heard that the New Society will benefit people like her.  The  
poor are the People, now.  And the mad do seem to be in control.

The theatre is filled with students.  They'll denounce him tomorrow,  
probably, or the next day.  He is Reactionary.  Counter-Revolutionary.    
He represents the decadent artistic tastes of the Bourgeoisie.

He wonders if River will be there for his interrogation.  Whether  
she'll crouch by his head while he weeps or break his feet with a  
cane.

The theatre is undarkened, because darkness elevates performers above  
the audience.  He sings.

At the back of the theatre, he sees River creep in.  She stands in the  
doorway's sunlight, mirroring his every gesture.


End file.
